helping women connect with their world
Mission or marriage: which takes the top spot in our lives? It’s a struggle all of us in global service have to face, and hopefully, resolve in a positive way.
Alexis Kenny has written a helpful handbook on developing your married life and integrating your marriage into your mission. For more info or to purchase the book in various formats, click here
Wait! Don’t stop reading yet, even though my title may move you to that action.
If you are like me, patience and its twin, perseverance, are some of your least favorite topics. We’ve been told, “Don’t pray for patience, because you will have to learn it the hard way.” But whether we pray for patience or not, successful lives are full of waiting.
My mother used to say that a woman’s life, especially, is full of waiting. We wait for someone to love us and ask to marry us. We wait for the wedding. We wait to get pregnant and then wait for the baby to be born. Then our waiting really starts! We wait for him to walk, and talk, and learn to use the toilet. We wait for her to go to school, then college, then begin her adult life. The waiting never seems to end, though our endurance feels like it might.
As cross cultural workers we wait, too. We wait to be approved. We wait while raising our support. Then we wait to go to our assignment. Language training means more patient endurance. Then, when we finally get into the reality of our work, we wait for the fruit of our labors.
This month one of our readers, Paula Cowan, offered to share some great ideas she has written on raising and keeping support. I was delighted for the offer and have been blessed by the information she shared. I think you’ll find her ideas both affirming and helpful.
While living overseas, finding new supporters and keeping the ones we have can be a major source of stress. When we only have a few supporters, hearing that one of them must discontinue their support can be frightening, even to mighty women of faith like us! Seriously, though, in some cases it has made the difference between continuing to serve overseas and returning home.
Then there are the challenges of keeping up with our correspondence, no matter how many supporters we have. That can take a huge portion of our time, but as Paula points out, it is time invested, not time wasted.
It is good for us to remember that we are not just aiming at meeting our budget each month. Our higher goal is to make connections between supporters and the people we serve.
Every mom wants the best for her children. And we do our best to provide all they need: unconditional love, training, and even correction.
But when we live and work overseas, we have additional concerns for our children. Normal maternal desires become multiplied and complicated by second home realities.
Some of you had to decide whether to give birth on your field or to return to your home country for delivery. Either choice causes concerns. If you remain on the field and you have a difficult delivery, will you get the medical care you need? If you return to your home country, there are additional travel costs and expenses both before and after the delivery there.
While your children reach pre-school age, other challenges pop up. If you are fully involved in work or ministry, you wonder whether child care is a safe option. Can you trust your little darling to someone else? If you are able to be at home with your child, you still may wonder about his playmates, what language he is learning, etc. When we lived in Africa, our youngest son complained to me that his playmate was stealing his toys. “Impossible,” I thought. But I talked to the boy’s mother anyway. In return, I got an angry scowl . . . and a big bag of my son’s missing toys.
Fifteen years ago I wrote an article on friendship for PWs. (That link will take you back there.) But this seems like a good time to rethink the issues and take a fresh look at how we make and keep friends while living and working outside our home culture.
We might think that friendship is simple and automatic, but we soon find out that it’s more complex than we thought. Then add the pressures of our work and the quirks of our host culture. All of that makes friendship a challenge.
Many of us have watched the effect of social media on friendships. It is not uncommon to see a group of people sitting at a café table, all looking at their phones and clicking away. They seem totally unaware of their companions at the table.
On the other hand, there are others who would dearly love to have any kind of relationship with peers, but there are none within a 500 mile radius.
Kimberly Todd, writing for VelvetAshes.com, has some helpful insights about finding and developing friendships. Let’s look at a few of her ideas:
Anyone is a potential friend. When we first arrive on our host culture, we may look desperately for someone ‘like us’ to befriend. If we hold onto that measure of friendship, we will find ourselves very lonely indeed. But when we look at everyone as a potential friend, we will be surprised with the great variety of friends we can have. Not everyone will become a close personal friend, but each can fill some part of our need for friends. And, we help them stretch their friendship boundaries too.
